Health Controversy: Would You Try Ice Cream Made With Breast Milk?

Forward-thinkers in the food world are always coming up with new tastes and textures--but how forward is too forward? Where do you think this new ice cream flavor fits in? It's Madagascan vanilla pods with lemon zest--and breast milk.

Icecreamists is a British ice cream store that pays lactating mothers cash in exchange for their pumped breast milk (the moms are given blood tests and health checks first, to screen for illness), which it then churns into an ice cream flavor called "Baby Gaga."

Oh, and the result is served in a martini glass (for about $22.50 a pop) by waitresses dressed like Lady Gaga. So there's a bit of theatricality--and shock-marketing, I think--involved here. (It's also not the first time a restaurateur has put breast milk on the menu: the chef at Klee Brasserie in New York sold cheese made from his wife's breast milk.)

Studies have shown that breast milk is great for babies' health: it ups their immunity and helps protect against asthma, diabetes and respiratory infections, among other benefits. There isn't much evidence to show how breast milk affects adults--understandably, since we don't drink it.

What about the flavor? A food critic stopped by Icecreamists yesterday and had a taste. Her review: "At first, [it tastes like] regular vanilla ice-cream, until the mouth-coating back taste kicks in--like a thin, more goatish, dairy. ... At first I liked it; then I didn't mind it; then I hated it; then I wanted to be sick." But who knows? The first 50 servings sold out completely.

What do you think? Would you ever try breast milk ice cream? Or breast milk cheese, for that matter? Why?